This is a simple step by step process, and we do minimal settings what to be done for distributing updates.

Spacewalk Channels

Channel is nothing but a collection of software (RPM) packages. A channel may contain packages from a specific distribution or contains packages for an application or family of applications. Users may also define channels.

Any client can subscribe to a particular channel to download, update, install packages. The channels are linked to upstream server (a normal YUM/DEB repository). A channel may have linked to multiple repositories, can be cloned, sync or customized.

There are two types of channels:

Base channels

Child channels

A base channel consists of packages based on a specific architecture and Red Hat Enterprise Linux release. A child channel is a channel associated with a base channel that contains extra packages. A system must be subscribed to only one base channel but it can be subscribed to multiple child channels of its base channel.

A subscribed system can only install or update packages available through its Satellite channels.

Create a Base Channel

Access the Spacewalk web console using the username and password that you defined in the previous tutorial.

https://spacewalk-server-ip

Goto Channels >> Manage Software Channels >> Create Channel.

Managing Channels and Repositories in Spacewalk – Create Base Channel

This is where you create a channel for your machine. My base channel looks like this.

Channel Name:itzgeek_centos7

Channel Label:itzgeek_centos7

Parent Channel:None (Because this is a Base Channel)

Architecture: x86_64

Channel Summary:ITzGeek CentOS 7 Base Channel

Leave the remaining as it is. Likewise, you can create a channel for different versions of CentOS / RHEL machines and architectures.

You need to be very careful while choosing an architecture for the channel as the machine with the same architecture can only able to subscribe to this channel.

You can go through sync logs to troubleshoot any issues arise during the synchronization.

# cat /var/log/rhn/reposync/<reponame>.log

Create an Activation Key

Here you can create activation keys for client subscription. In this page, you need to select the base channel ( itzgeek_centos7).

Whenever any client uses this key, the client machine will be automatically subscribed to the created channel. You can create multiple keys in case you would like to assign multiple channels to a client machine.